Fractal
by Lunar1
Summary: After six years, Rose has learnt to accept the impossibility of being reunited with the Doctor. So why when she closes her eyes does Gallifrey burns before them...?Spoilers for Seasons 1, 2 and 3.
1. Bad Dreams

Rose's eyes slammed open, the ceiling of her bedroom slowly swimming into focus. Her chest was still heaving as if she had been running hard and she was drenched in sweat. Instinctively she reached out with her left hand, but her fingers encountered nothing more than the cool cotton of her bedsheets. There was light, entering the room through a gap in the curtains, and the bedside clock read six twenty-seven. Rose sighed, as full consciousness kicked in. It was Thursday morning, three minutes before her alarm went off, and she was safe in her own bed.

And alone.

She swung her legs out of bed and padded across the luxuriant carpet into her ensuite bathroom, shedding her nightie and stepping into the shower. The cool water pounding on her head was blessed relief from the sticky heat of nightmarish sleep. She was still annoyed at her initial reaction upon waking from her bad dream. Mark had been gone three weeks now, she really should be getting used to sleeping alone.

Again.

She finished washing her hair and stepped out of the shower, wrapping herself in a large, fluffy white towel. The bathroom was a beautiful creation in gleaming white marble and pretty blue tiles. Pete's money had paid for the place, and he refused Rose's offers to pay rent, so her salary was spent on redecorating the London pad. Apparently the alternate Jackie had possessed as much taste when it came wallpapers, carpets and bathroom fittings as her own mother did. After nearly two years the place was at last beginning to resemble a home Rose felt comfortable within.

Washed, dressed and fully made up for work, Rose wandered downstairs to her comfortable kitchen to make her morning cup of tea and toast. She felt a stab of irritation as she pottered around the room; she realised Mark's coffee cup was still hanging on the mug-tree, and through the half-open door she could see one of his jumpers on top of a pile of undone ironing. She toyed with the idea of gleefully destroying them both, but decided against it. At twenty-six, she really should be mature enough to move on with dignity and return his forgotten belongings at the next reasonable opportunity.

By half past seven Rose was wheeling her bicycle out of the front door and down onto the street. Safe in the garage was quite an expensive car, but the London congestion charges were far too excessive to consider driving the short distance to Torchwood Tower, and besides, Rose enjoyed the exercise. A few more minutes on the bike meant a few less minutes in the training gym under the beady eyes of Jamie, the personal trainer for all Torchwood field officers. He was a nice enough guy, Rose would have grudgingly admitted if pressed, but having the muscle-bound ex-SAS soldier bellow in your ear could leave a lasting impression.

She was in her office by five past eight, sorting through her email inbox. Nothing fantastically interesting had arrived in the night, to her disappointment. She supposed she should be grateful, as she needed the time to sort out the mound of paperwork last week's narrowly averted Auton invasion had caused, but she wasn't. Fighting the plastic monsters had reawakened far too many memories. On top of Mark's late night flight from her house after a blazing row, she wasn't having the best of months.

She looked up at a familiar knock on the door to see Mickey smiling at her. "Hey," she said, smiling back, "What're you doing in so early?"

He shrugged. "Got to catch up on paperwork," he admitted, and grinned wider at her grimace.

"Yeah. Me too."

Mickey took a step forward, shooting a furtive look down the corridor before pulling the door closed behind him. "How are you feeling?" he asked, radiating concern.

Long gone were the days when Rose would have been annoyed by his compassion. She pulled a face. "Pretty miserable," she admitted, "I've been... dreaming a lot again. And the whole Mark... thing... doesn't help either."

He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "You'll be fine," he said, bracingly, and she forced a smile.

"Yeah, I know."

* * *

The dream was always the same.

_The mighty armada of ships hangs in space, sleek steel shapes against the black backdrop of eternal night. The stars burn cold, matching the freeze of the blood in her veins. Amongst these monsters of the sky the TARDIS is as incongruous as a strawberry in a salad, and yet the comm does not crackle with commander's voices, telling her to stay away. _

_As the Dalek ships appear on the scanner she almost wishes they would. Wave after wave after wave with no seeming end... she realises this is a battle the Time Lords cannot win, will not win._

_And now the comm crackles and the voice she was dreading speaks. "Doctor... if we cannot prevail... You know what you must do." _

_Rose hears the fear in the speaker's voice, though she is trying her best to hide it. "Romana.." she manages, voice cracking, "Don't make me-"_

_"Only you can do this, Doctor," she cuts across, "... I believe in you."_

_And Gallifrey is burning, and the armada is burning and the Daleks are burning and everyone is screaming, screaming; thousands upon thousands of voices crying out into the universe, voices she cannot shut out even when she clamps her hands over her ears. And the TARDIS is burning now, and she knows that her own flesh soon will burn with the light of the Time Lord's curse. _

_She wishes for blackness, for an end, and instead is given a shuddering crash as the TARDIS lands. She doesn't know where she is, can't see the control panel any more – it's wreathed in smoke. _

_And the door opens, and there stands a figure whose face she cannot see. But the eyes, the eyes... they burn with the intensity of the sun, flashing gold. _

"I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself"

* * *

It was hard to explain, the uneasy feeling that seemed to have suffused her life over the past fortnight. It was a kind of prickling on the back of her neck that struck at odd moments, a curious tingle sometimes in her fingertips she couldn't explain. It was a little bit like deja-vu, but not as specific. Frankly, having been plagued with the odd sensation for eleven days now, Rose was more than a little annoyed about it; unable to find a reasonable explanation except perhaps her current downcast mood, which she was loathe to use as an excuse.

She was picking at her lunch when the alarms suddenly erupted into life, shocking her so much her fork dropped from tingling fingers. She stood up so quickly her chair fell over, and sprinted for the control room. Doctor Henry was behind the commander's desk, and he smiled without humour as she hurried across to him.

"Unusual energy signature," he explained, "In the Westminster area. We're trying to pinpoint it now."

She nodded and waited patiently at the side of his desk. Far too many unusual energy signatures had been detected by the Torchwood staff in the past six years for her stomach to perform the sort of acrobatics it has used to, when every alarm had raised the possibility of it being _him_, doing exactly what he had said he never could. Instead it lolloped feebly, making her momentarily queasy.

"Got it," Henry said, "We have a camera in the area..."

She stared at the image on his computer screen, as the camera panned across an alleyway, quiet by the standards of London at lunchtime.

She inhaled sharply as Henry exclaimed. "Good lord! It's _him_."

The TARDIS seemed to fill the screen, as blood roared in her ears.

_But it can't be. He said it was impossible!_

_When did that ever stop him before?_

Henry turned to face one of his best field operatives, but Rose hadn't bothered to wait for the order. Her long brown hair was already swishing out of sight as she sprinted for the lift.


	2. A Little Too Ironic

Rose leapt off her bike, leaving it on its side on the pavement, back wheel still spinning. The TARDIS stood in front of her, and close to she could see the subtle differences from the time-ship she remembered, imperfections the grainy image from the CCTV camera did not pick out. She stepped closer, her hand reaching out instinctively to a place where the wood of the Police Box seemed to have become almost transparent; the mask the ship wore to hide its true nature apparently slipping. Curiosity overcame even her need to see the occupant of the TARDIS. Her fingers appeared to touch warm wood, but it was like touching the glass of a mirror, something was beyond the physical barrier her hand could not penetrate. There was a suggestion of something vaguely organic about the half-visible material underneath the illusion, that put her in mind of the walls of the control room...

A fierce yearning seemed to have unfolded inside her. She had long since started to believe that his goodbye on the Norwegian beach would be the final words the Doctor would ever speak to her and the possibility that she might hear him again was almost unbearable.

Her fingers trembled as they closed around the door handle. She pushed, and realised the door was locked. Hand still shaking, she reached for the neck of her shirt. Against her skin, hidden by her clothes, the key the Doctor has once given her still hung, the one sentimentalism she had allowed herself. As if in a dream she slipped it into the lock, and turned. The lock clicked, and the door opened under her touch.

She paused for the briefest of seconds. This should not, _could not_ be happening At any moment she felt sure her eyes would open and the white ceiling of her bedroom would greet her.

She stepped inside. The control room was dark, and even more worryingly a haze of smoke hung in the air, making her eyes sting and catching in her throat. "D-doctor?" she coughed.

She crossed hesitantly to the console, and with a sinking feeling in her stomach realised it was comprehensively smashed. The few lights still blinking she recognised as warning systems, reading a litany of destruction. Oxygen levels: low... Structural integrity: failing... Flight systems: off-line...

A low moan made her jump. "Doctor?" she called again, wiping her streaming eyes.

The man seemed to rise up out of the smoke, although later she would rationalise he had been thrown against one of the pillars and hidden by the fumes. He was terribly burnt; her first instinct was to withdraw in revulsion from him. He extended the remains of what might once have been a hand as his mouth tried to frame the question.

It was the eyes that betrayed his identity, as she fought the terrible desire to flee from the ruined man. No matter their colour or the face they were framed with, there was something about the eyes...

"Doctor?" she whispered, and ran forward to catch him as his legs buckled. He was heavy, too heavy for her to support his weight and she sank to the floor, cradling the broken man in her arms. The smell of burnt skin and hair was terrible but she brushed some of the remaining long curls away from his face. He had been peppered with shrapnel, probably from the ruined console, but she could see this incarnation had been a handsome man. What remained of his clothes put her in mind of a Victorian gentleman; velvet coat, open collar, complete with cravat...

His eyes opened again, glazed with pain. "The Bad Wolf," he murmured.

"What did you say?" she breathed.

"The Bad Wolf... who are you?" he managed.

She ignored the sinking feeling in her stomach. "My name's Rose Tyler," she managed, quelling the disappointment the realisation that this Doctor was a stranger to her freighted.

"How did you... get into the TARDIS?"

Her hands found his, her fingers wrapping around his wrists where she could feel the erratic stutter of his double-time pulse. "I've got a key," she replied, shocked to find tears were falling from her eyes. "Doctor... You're dying."

He managed a smile, a bubble of blood bursting at the corner of his mouth as he struggled to draw his final breath. "... curse of the Time Lords," he said, as his pulse slowed, "... be seeing you, Rose Ty..."

She lowered him to the floor, her heart hammering madly. His body remained still, no brilliant light bursting from him. She thought for a moment, and pressed a button on the broken console. There was a hiss, a blast of cool air, and the smoke was gone. Smiling without humour she crossed to the door and shut it to, her mouth twitching as she remembered a voice from her memory, long ignored.

_"The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through that door, and believe me, they've tried."_

She leaned against the closed door, watching the body on the floor, waiting. Unease began to settle on her, and she took a tentative step forward-

Light, effulgent orange light too bright to look at, engulfed him and her heart seemed to skip a beat as she covered her eyes.

When she opened them again, he was standing up, surveying his tattered close with a forlorn expression. He looked up, his icy blue eyes meeting hers. She smiled faintly, realising the irony of seeing before her another face she had never expected to see again, and wishing it was the other.

"Hello, Doctor," she managed.

"Rose," he said, the manic smile she had known so well spreading across his features. She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat hearing her name said in his Salford accent seemed to have conjured.

"That's me," she replied, "Rose Tyler."

"The Bad Wolf," he added in an undertone, and her next remark died on her lips.

"That's me too," she replied, her own voice low.

"How?" he asked, walking across the metal grating until he was standing in front of her. She found she was staring at his feet, unable to meet his piercing eyes. He was taller than his previous incarnation, several inches of bare ankle showing above his shoes. The stupidity of this made her smile, and she found she could meet his gaze once more.

"I looked into the Heart of the TARDIS, to save my Doctor from the Daleks."

His face seemed to twitch as she spoke the name. "They're dead," he managed, voice hard, "I was there, I saw."

"I know. I'm not talking about... this universe." For the first time in a very long while the absurdity of what she was saying suddenly struck her. The Rose Tyler she thought had vanished upon stepping over the threshold of the TARDIS more than six years ago supplied a chuckle she managed not to vocalise at the way her world had turned.

"Ah," said the Doctor, as realisation apparently dawned, " But that... that can't be, not any more..." His face seemed to drain of colour, and for a moment she thought he was remembering the fall of Gallifrey. He raised a hand to his head, apparently unconsciously about to brush away long hair he no longer had, opened his mouth, and then fell over backwards in a dead faint.


	3. Explanations

The Doctor woke to find himself in one of the TARDIS's bedrooms, cool sheets covering his new and naked body. On the bedside table there was a cup of tea. His fingers touched the mug and he made a noise of appreciation: it was still warm.

He drained the cup, wondering whether Rose (assuming it _was _her, of course) had known the drink was the perfect antidote to regeneration sickness or if it had been a happy accident. He put the cup down and swung his legs out of bed. The wardrobe of this room was mirrored and he examined the reflection in it for a few moments, flicking his new, over-large ears and tracing his long straight nose. Longer and lankier seemed to be the overall theme, which bought some compensations for his new face. Not the most conventionally attractive of forms, he supposed, but certainly satisfactory.

There was a pair of black trousers on a coat hanger, along with a green v-necked jumper, a leather jacket and a pair of black shoes. On the desk chair the helpful someone had even thought to include boxers and socks. He dressed quickly and then headed out into the corridor.

He half expected to find Rose in the kitchen, perhaps boiling the kettle to make another pot of tea. Instead, she was in the control room, muttering to herself as she tried to decipher the readout on the TARDIS's screen.

"Hey!" he found himself yelling, "Who said you could touch that?"

Rose turned, smiling. "Glad to see you're awake." Her smile faded as his scowl remained fixed. "I'm sorry," she said, "I know I shouldn't have. But there wasn't even enough power to make the kettle boil, so I thought I should bring some of the minor systems back online."

The Doctor ran his hands over the shattered controls, taking in the information on the screen. "How'd you know how to do that?" he murmured.

Rose blushed. "My Doctor was... teaching me how to use his TARDIS. I didn't get very far," she said, "But I can at least get life support working, and basic power." She held out something cylindrical. "I found this under the grating."

He took it from her solemnly. "It's a-"

"-Sonic screwdriver. I know."

He sat down on one of the battered chairs, frowning again. Rose found she was grinning, she'd forgotten how often his face had creased in that brooding expression.

_Not his face, _she thought suddenly. It was all too easy to pretend this was the old Doctor, but she'd long ago learnt that hiding from harsh reality only made dealing with it later more problematic.

"How did you get here, Rose Tyler?" he asked, saying her name as if he was seeing how the words sounded.

The story came hesitantly at first, as she struggled to recall all the details. The Doctor listened intently, his brow furrowed, and didn't interrupt or exclaim. She saw his knuckles whiten as she spoke of the Dalek's Sphere, his frown deepen as she told of Torchwood's meddlings with the fabric of time and space but he remained silent until she had almost reached the end of the story, when her voice began to crack slightly.

"And then... he sent me away again, to be safe-"

"Again?"

Her tongue darted out over her lips as she tried to think of the right words. "We'd fought the Daleks before. The Doctor sent me home in the TARDIS and told me to forget him."

"And that's when you looked into the Heart?" His voice was harsh but there was a nameless emotion in his eyes.

She nodded. "I don't remember everything after that. But I know that I-we... we destroyed them, and the Doctor..." she swallowed, "The Doctor kis- I mean, took the Time Vortex and then... regenerated."

"Into me?"

She was shocked at his phrasing. "No. From you."

He nodded, as if to himself. "So, he sent you away again..."

"I couldn't leave him," she managed. She hated herself for the tears stinging her eyes now, but could do nothing to stop them slipping silently onto her cheeks. "And so we opened the void, to destroy them all. But...I nearly fell into the void... someone from here came through for a moment to save me, and took me back. And then I was stuck on this side, and him on the other and there wasn't a path home..."

"You never saw him again?"

"Yes, I did. Just once," she said, wiping her eyes. "There was time to send one transmission. Just one... goodbye."

The Doctor was silent, his mouth a stony line. "I'm sorry," he offered after a while, aware it would never be enough.

Rose shrugged, calm again, ashamed for letting the few tears fall. "It was six years ago." She sniffed. "What happened to you, anyway, to leave the TARDIS in this state?"

She'd spoken lightly, but his face seemed to darken, another almost forgotten expression her Doctor had worn less often since regenerating. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, "I should have..." Realisation suddenly dawned. _The dreams..._

She took his hand, instinctively, remembering the words of a later Doctor.

"_You know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold."_

"Doctor?" she ventured after a while. He seemed to stir from whatever place in his own mind he had been occupying.

"Mm?"

"How did... how did you know I was the Bad Wolf?"

Blue eyes bored into brown. "I dreamt it. When I was unconscious, before you came into the TARDIS."

"How?" Rose asked, as he released her hand at last.

"Now that," he replied, standing up and crossing to the console, "Is a very good question. And here's another. Why now, why Earth? Why did the TARDIS land here?"

"The Autons," Rose said, pointing at him, "They turned up last week."

"The TARDIS must have picked up their signal, out of place and out of time. And so she sent me here, even when she was badly broken..." His grin was returning, and Rose was almost loathe to say the words and rob him of it.

"But we got rid of them last week."

"You? You got rid of them?"

"Not just me, but yeah. I negotiated with the Nestene consciousness," she retorted, mildly irked by his disbelief. "It's pretty easy if you don't walk in with a tube of anti-plastic as 'insurance.'"

His shark's smile merely widened. "I did that?"

"Yeah. It's how we met. I saved you life," she said, almost mocking.

He took a step forward and leaned forward, so his nose was inches from hers. "You can feel it, can't you?"

Wrong-footed by his sudden closeness she shrugged. "Feel what?"

"The tingle in your fingers, on the back of your neck," he said, touching his own with his hand, "The feeling that-"

"They're gone," she said, understanding flooding her. Almost dreamlike she raised a hand to her own neck. "I dreamt of the Time War."

"I think it's the TARDIS... the telepathic link you once shared with one, one which must have been a clone of this model, or your key wouldn't have fit the lock..." His hands were suddenly inches from her temples and she recoiled, wrapping his fingers with her own.

"That's not the first time you or your TARDIS has gone rummaging around in my brain without permission," she said angrily, "But it's polite to ask."

He had the decency to look mildly embarrassed. "You know about that too? I'm sorry."

She let go. "You can look for whatever you want. But you're not to change anything, or make me forget or... or anything like that."

He gave her an exasperated look. "Do you really think I would do that?"

She smiled. "No. But it was worth-"

_He was inside her mind and she was suddenly lost in her own memories. _

_The Nestene consciousness, writhing in front of her, metal in her hands as she saw him struggle_

_the remains of Earth, floating in space, destroyed while no one watched and mourned by so few_

_woman wept  
_

_hanging from a barrage balloon, union jack across her chest in the middle of a German air raid_

_a cat in a nun's wimple_

_a Dalek floating up stairs effortlessly, a metal menace that chilled her blood_

_Cardiff, the rift, the TARDIS on charge_

_a pair of mad red eyes and voice, a voice that made her want to clamp her hands over her ears and scream for it to stop_

_the Doctor helping her up from the floor, hugging her_

_a kiss  
_

She was staring at the Doctor's face again, his expression unreadable once more. "I'm not him," he said, softly. "I might look the same, and act the same, but I'm not him."

"I know."

"I'm not in love with you like he is," he said, his tone still tender. Her breath caught in her throat for a moment at the words, for a reason she couldn't really fathom.

"I know."

"It will be different, for me and you."

"I know."

He smiled. "It was never just about him, though, was it?"

She shook her head, almost ashamed. "No."

"It was about seeing the universe and... _a better way of living_," he said, and she flinched to hear her own words thrown back at her.

"Yeah."

"I can give you that."

"I know."

"Is it worth it? Worth a London flat, a family, friends?"

The answer doesn't come as quickly as it once might. Leaving her mother, Peter, her brother, Mickey, Jake... her job, even.

"More than worth it," she grins, after a seconds' grace.


	4. Loose Threads

Nothing is ever as simple as it was over six years ago, when naive and nineteen she had stepped over the threshold of the TARDIS and believed the Doctor's mastery of time and space would enable her to return to the precise moment she had left; that no one would be any the wiser to her fabulous journey and that she could put off uncomfortable goodbyes and tedious details to some wonderfully vague future. At twenty-six, with the kind of job she has, a family she still eats dinner with on a Sunday... there are things that need to be done before she starts travelling again. Not least packing some clean underwear, something that somewhat regrettably hadn't entered her head last time the..._a_ Doctor... had made this offer.

Fortunately, the TARDIS was in no shape to fly anywhere, and she left the Doctor tinkering to deal with the mundane preparations of leaving. Micked was outside the TARDIS, face anxious. A security team, flicking the safeties off their machine guns as she emerged, were ranged behind him. She held up her hands as they raised the barrels of the guns. "It's me," she said simply.

Mickey waved a a scanner, backwards engineered by some of Torchwood's brightest from alien material, at her. "She's clean," he said, and the soldiers lowered their weapons. Rose hardly used the scanner. If the Doctor had taught her one thing, it was never to be over reliant on technology. Why do a scan for alien tech if simply asking a question could suffice? Before breaking out the machine she found asking for a piece of personal information would often be enough to expose the majority of alien duplicates.

"It's not him," she said quietly, "It's this reality's Doctor."

"Why's he here?"

"Accident. Picked up the Auton's signal but hit a week to late. The TARDIS is badly damaged."

Mickey saw her expression and knew better than to ask why. "So he'll stay until he fixes his ship... then what?" His face fell before she even opened her mouth. They had never rekindled their relationship, in spite of their closeness. Privately, Rose had felt Mickey deserved better than second place, better than a lifetime of knowing that if she could have been with the Doctor instead she would have been.

And the days were long gone when Mickey was happy to settle for second place.

Nevertheless, she knew he still cared deeply for her, as she him. He could read her answer in her eyes, knowing her so well. "You're going with him, aren't you?"

She nodded.

He was silent for a moment, face grave. Then he nodded. "I'm glad."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I mean, it'll be hard for your mum and Pete, and Olly's really going to miss you... but..."

He left the sentence hanging and she found a lump had risen to her throat at the thought of her family. "Thanks," she managed.

"You're going to tell them?" he checked, and she rolled her eyes in response.

"Of course. This isn't like last time. I'm tying up my loose ends here before I go swanning off."

"Does that mean... we'll never see you?" he asked, eyes widening.

She laughed. "I doubt it. It's not as if he didn't let me visit last time... I mean, the other Doctor. They don't seem all that different. I just..." This time, it was her that couldn't quite put her feelings into words, but Mickey thought perhaps he understood.

Rose would never, given the chance, have left the Doctor. In their own reality she had always left enough of herself behind on Earth... in a messy bedroom that went untouched by Jackie in her absence, in the lie that she was 'travelling' rather than gone for good, in the friendships she half maintained with the occasional text message : "Jst been 2 Rome (never mind it was 3rd century Italy, and she'd been wearing a toga) weather's g8!" ... enough of herself that there was still the implication that one day she'd be back for good. He knew that this time, she didn't want that. If she did come home, she'd build herself a new life. She wouldn't want to simply pick up the threads of her old.

* * *

Rose has almost finished cramming the last of her packing into the rucksack when she felt the key around her neck pulse with warmth, and the curious whooshing noise of the TARDIS materialising filled her bedroom. She stood stock still, pair of socks still in hand as the outline appeared, filled out and the blue box was standing, impossibly, in front of the window.

The door swung inwards, and the Doctor was leaning against the lintel. His eyes bulged slightly as he took in the suitcase and huge rucksack.

"Before you say anything," she said acerbically, hefting the rucksack onto her shoulders, "I know that the TARDIS is potentially infinite in size. And also that travelling with you takes its toll on clothes, 'specially shoes."

He grinned, apparently proud of this and stepped aside to let her on board.

She stopped in the centre of the console room, taking a deep, happy breath. It looked exactly like she remembered, even down to the rubber mallet the doctor was so fond of whacking the console with in times of mechanical crisis. She tried to remind herself that this _wasn't _home, that she'd only been inside this TARDIS once before... but perhaps that was wrong. This _was _home now; and she'd be lying if she pretended that she didn't hope it always would be.

She was mildly surprised that the room the TARDIS selected as hers was different from last time. She went to the same door as last time, the closest one to the console room and opposite the kitchen (or one of them, at least). The old TARDIS had often rearranged her rooms, putting them behind different doors, but somehow she'd expected the machine to present her with the same bedroom. The Doctor had never said as much, but after learning the TARDIS was inside her very brain she'd half suspected the wily old time-ship selected the rooms for companions based on their needs, maybe even created them to suit.

Last time she'd flown inside a TARDIS, to all extents a clone of this one, the room she had been presented with had been roughly double the size of her room at home, decorated in a light pink colour, with matching bedclothes and a huge mirrored wardrobe.

This room in comparison was more neutral in colour, the walls the same unearthly material as last time but a light cream colour. There was a four-poster double bed apparently carved from a dark wood, the bed clothes blue, with patterns picked out in silver thread. The furnishings; a wardrobe, chest of drawers, desk and chair and free-standing mirror; were the same dark wood as the bed, the carvings adorning their surfaces matching.

There was another door opposite the entrance. Turning the knob, it opened into a bathroom, again different from the one she remembered. She wondered what all these differences meant; were they reflections of the changes six years had wrought on Rose Tyler? On balance, she decided these were the rooms of a woman, rather than those of a girl on the verge of becoming one. She grinned at the thought of her nineteen year old self's reaction to that statement.

The Doctor was standing by the control panel when she emerged a few moments later. Too excited at the prospect of adventure to unpack just yet she had simply dumped her bags. "Where're we going?" she asked, unable to keep the grin off her face.

He smiled back at her. "I thought a secret underground bunker near Salt Lake City, Utah, might be a good place to start."

She nodded, realising he'd had the good grace to only look at her memories regarding her time with the Doctor. For a moment she considered letting him go, and find out for himself, before smugly filling him in on the details. But that wasn't really Rose's way.

"Henry Van Statten died in a car crash in 2008 in this reality. The bunker's been filled in and Torchwood took his collection of alien artefacts." _And put Adam to work on one of our research projects_, she added mentally. "The Dalek was one of two items I remembered never recovered."

The Doctor's smile broadened.

"Victor Kennedy doesn't exist here either," Rose went on, "And Chloe Webber... her Dad was arrested on domestic abuse charges after a passing police officer made a house-call one evening. Trish and Chloe got counselling from one of the best, and live in Manchester now. And a Torchwood team was waiting in Dame Kelly Holmes close for when the Isoles pod arrived, and sent it back to its family. The Slitheen haven't turned up yet, nor the Sycorax. Perhaps they never will. But Torchwood is ready and waiting all the same."

There was admiration in the Doctor's eyes, but he did his best to hide it. "Seems like you thought of everything," he said grudgingly.

"Nah. That's your job."

"Well since the Earth seems in no immediate great danger... where to Rose Tyler?"

She thought for a moment of all the places in a thousand galaxies she'd seen, all the words she'd whizzed past on their whistle stop tour of the universe, all the things she'd yearned to see just one more time... His question felt like a test, but this was one she thought she knew the answer to.

"Somewhere new."

The quirk of his eyebrow let her know she'd answered correctly. "Here we go then."

He pulled the lever and with a tremendous jolt the TARDIS launched itself into time and space once again.


End file.
